Apple has confirmed that Steve Jobs will miss the company’s annual meeting on
Wednesday.

Jobs, who is the co-founder and chief executive of Apple, is on a leave of absence from the company due to ill health. Last month, Jobs confirmed that he would step back from his day-to-day role at the technology giant in order to seek help for ongoing digestive health issues that have left him looking frail and gaunt in recent months.

It will be the first time since re-joining Apple in 1997 that Jobs has missed an annual meeting. His place will be taken by Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, who has assumed many of Jobs’ responsibilities in his absence. Jobs is scheduled to return to his role at Apple this summer.

Shareholders attending the meeting are likely to question Apple’s senior executives about the circumstances surrounding Jobs’ leave of absence from the company. Apple has been criticised by some technology analysts for failing to disclose the true nature of his health complaints.

Jobs’ absence from the Macworld conference in January was initially explained as an operational decision tied to the fact it would be Apple’s last appearance at the show, and that they no longer set so much store by the event. However, just days after the conference, Jobs issued a statement saying that his health problems were “more complex” than he originally thought.

It is thought that many shareholders will press Apple on sucession plans for the management of the company should Steve Jobs be forced to quit his post through ill health.